Continuing the Publication Countdown: Cover Art, Page Proofs, and Author Photo, Oh My!

A good gulp of hot whiskey at bedtime — it's not very scientific, but it helps.

~ Sir Alexander Fleming

The publication process of my novel just keeps rolling on toward the finish line. And, let me tell you, it's a whole lot of work, and a heckuva lot of fun.

Last night I returned from a whirlwind trip to Columbia, South Carolina, where I spent a couple of nights with my aunt, zipped down to Myrtle Beach and back for a photo shoot (more on this), perused the stacks at The South Caroliniana Library for research for the novel on which I'm currently working (slowly, painstakingly slowly), and as a bonus, got to have lunch with an old friend.

Before I detail the trip, let me just say that I was by myself, in the car, for a total of 9 1/2 hours. I can't remember the last time I was alone in a car. I think it was about three years ago. I played my music, loud.

My road trip playlist:

Sugarland

U2

The Pogues

The Dixie Chicks

REM

Sam Phillips

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

Brandi Carlile

The Corrs

Aimee Mann

Dolly Parton

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Suzy Boggus

a mix my sister made for my bachelorette weekend (back in 2004)

"Here Come the 1 2 3s" by They Might Be Giants (yes, this is a kids' CD. I forgot about that fact until halfway through the first song, but it didn't matter, because these guys rock)

and soundtracks from Crazy Heart, Sweet Home Alabama, and Alfie.   

Yes, there's some serious woman power happening there.

I sang at the top of my lungs. I had a milkshake. It looked like this:

Photo Credit: www.grubgrade.com

 It was heaven. (I'm conveniently forgetting about Myrtle Beach traffic.)

In the short time I spent at my aunt's gorgeous 1930s bungalow in the Shandon area of Columbia, we drank adult beverages, ate delicious food, visited with another aunt and uncle, talked to her cat, looked at old photographs, went for a walk around the neighborhood--which is one of the prettiest, if not the prettiest, in Columbia, and just talked. I slept in my aunt's huge sleigh bed, and didn't open my eyes from the time my head hit the pillow until my alarm went off in the mornings. Much as I adore the little voice at home who shouts, "Mama! Daddy! Come get me! I had a very nice sleep! Mama! Daddy! Where are you?! I want out!" this. was. divine.

But back to work.

On Monday, I jetted down to Myrtle Beach for a photo shoot (for my author photo which will appear on the back of the book) with my ridiculously talented and gorgeous cousin-in-law, Paula Player. (You really should check out her web site, especially if you're planning a wedding or event anywhere in the Grand Strand vicinity, but also just to peruse her incredible photographs.) We met at Paula's friend's studio, Paula did my makeup (because I am, still, a tomboy), and had a great time. After, we went to lunch, talked nonstop about life and marriage and our kids, and the seeds were planted for what I foresee to be a beautiful friendship. 

I'm excited to see how the photographs turn out. And nervous. I asked her if she could make me look 10 years younger and 20 lbs lighter. She laughed.

Back in Columbia, within the lovely and hushed walls of The South Caroliniana Library, I played with research for the novel I'm currently writing. It's set in the 1850s in Charleston, South Carolina, just before the whole world is about to explode and change forever with Civil War (or as some refer to it down here: The Late Unpleasantness), and it's narrated by Josephine Scott, the great-great granddaughter of my characters in Keowee Valley, who's a sort of Southern Jo March. On advice from my new friend and pen pal, the writer Philip Lee Williams, I started to create a timeline for the novel by sifting through old newspapers of the period. I pray that this will help my complete inability to outline (or even really plan at all) the story.

Photo credit: http://library.sc.edu/socar/books.html

But The South Caroliniana Library. Oh, that library. It's gorgeous. Quiet. The staff are wonderfully helpful and kind. (Yes, they let me in the place in spite of the fact that my blood runneth orange.)

There's something so wonderfully old-fashioned and high-academic about it. You fill out a request, and they retrieve books from the stacks for you. You get to sit at these lovely desks with your own lamp. I could've spent hours there.

But I digress.

Currently, two booky things are going on in the world of Keowee Valley:

1. My publishers just sent me the Preliminary Page Proofs for the novel. This is exactly what the pages will look like inside the book itself. What I have to do--and what I'm doing now--is to go through the novel line by line, looking for any sort of mechanics errors. This ain't easy. It's a long novel. But fun, still fun!

2. My fabulous publishers have recently commissioned the artist M. C. Krauss to create the cover of Keowee Valley. While she mostly works in fantasy, she also works with individual subjects and covers. Her digital work is stunning, ethereal and cool, and I'm thrilled to see what she dreams up.

So that's what's going on in my world, at least on the book end of things. Add every day life to the mix, and in the words of my husband, minus the expletives, "It's a crazy-fest."

But I honestly wouldn't trade it for a thing.

Enough about me. I want to know: How are y'all? How are your summers going so far? What have you been up to in your writing, working, and reading worlds?  

Countdown to Novel Publication

The official publication date for KEOWEE VALLEY is September 15, 2012!

I say "official," and that's what I've been told ... so, hopefully, this won't change.

It's hard for me to believe, and oh so very exciting: in 60 days, my first novel will become a real book, out in the word, corporeal, for all to see and hold and--dear Lord, please--read. I've spent a good deal of time avoiding this thought--my publication date--because, much as I hate to admit, I've got a bit of the fatalist in me. I need to hold that sucker in my hands before I truly believe that it's real.

There are a great many things that will occur in my writing world before September 15th.

1. The cover design must be completed by my publisher's design team.
2. More endorsements/blurbs from authors who are reading KEOWEE VALLEY need to come in. (Man, oh man, I hope they do. Though I've thankfully had some wonderful advance praise so far, I've got more great authors reading the ARC right now. Fingers crossed.)
3. A book launch party must be planned.
4. An author photo for the back of the book must be chosen.
5. I've got to do all sorts of pre-publication organizing, having to do with promotional materials, press releases, book store events and speaking engagements, etc.  

Here are the things that have to occur in my personal world: (What? I can't just smile and carry my book around like a blankie?)

1. My daughter's 3rd birthday (and party). Yikes.
2. A photo shoot with my very talented cousin-in-law, Paula Player, a photographer in Myrtle Beach (more to come about this), about 6 hours away from where I live.
3. A beach vacation with my family (including my parents, sister and brother-in-law, and all our dogs). Woohoo!
4. Planning for the English courses I'm teaching this Fall. Which begin next month. Oh, law.
5. A total body makeover, including toned abs, sculpted arms, and legs like Gwyneth Paltrow. Why are you laughing?
6. The possible almost maybe perhaps chance consideration of starting work on Baby #2. Did I just type that out loud?
7. Oh, yeah, and I'm still in graduate school.

All of these things are good things. I feel very lucky, and most fortunate, to have them occurring at this point in my life.

But the book, my novel ... the book is the thing.

Right now, it still looks like this:



The Advance Review Copy of KEOWEE VALLEY

Sort of like an elegant phone book, right? I can't wait to see what cover design my publishers put together. It's been an interesting process, the back-and-forth about the cover, but I'm confident it'll be a good one because I promised them my third-born child if it is. Did I just write that out loud?

More to come on the novel publication countdown, the process, and how I'm handling (or not) motherhood, wifehood, teacherhood, studenthood, and writerhood along with it. That's a lot of hoods.

Feels Like Home

Whenever we pull up in the driveway of our house, I turn to my daughter and say, "Home again, home again?" And she responds, "Jiggety jig!" Then she grins and shows her dimples.

Those are some killer dimples. If I didn't love them so much, I'd want them to disappear before high school so that there's no chance of a blonde hair-dimples-boobs combination happening when she'll be anywhere near 17 year-old boys.

Vermont College's Chapel Hall

But I digress. Home. Ahh. I am home after 11 days in Montpelier, Vermont, at my second residency at the MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was a packed 11 days, full of lectures, readings, workshops, walking around town, and talking--talking with other students and faculty members, about writing and the writing life, the residency itself, and books... books upon books. (Really, one of the best things about residency, I've found, is the reading list I end up compiling from everyone's fabulous suggestions. Now I'm trying to avoid Amazon like we're college students who kissed last night and don't want to talk about it.)

My first residency over the winter, I'll be honest, was a bit disappointing to me, mainly because the workshop experience wasn't all I'd hoped--though I loved the campus, the snow, the dorm rooms. (Kidding about that last one.) But as anyone who's had their writing workshopped before--meaning you've sat in a room, sometimes around a table, with several other writers like you all coming from various places of experience and ego, and listened to people critique your work--you know it can be a toss-up.

Connie May Fowler
(photo credit: lyceumagency.com)

This residency, I won the workshop lottery. Really, the workshop gods (hmm.. wonder what they'd wear? Argyle socks and elbow patches? A beret?) smiled on me. We're talking laid a big ol' Miss America toothy grin on me. 

How? I was assigned to a special novel workshop led by VCFA faculty members and writers Connie May Fowler and Tom Greene, who is also the president of Vermont College. Whereas last residency I spent workshop in a basement room with only casement windows (and I'm claustrophobic), this time my workshop was held in a gorgeous, white-walled, high-ceilinged room in Chapel Hall (the photo you see above), with nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the quad, nearby buildings, the sky. Ah. And I'm sure this had nothing to do with the fact that one of the co-leaders of the workshop is the president of the College. God bless him.

Tom Greene
(photo credit: vcfa.edu)

I won't get into the minute details of the workshop (though if anyone's interested in them, please feel free to write and ask), but I will say that it was everything a good workshop should be: well-organized, constructive, enlightening, full of participants who'd submitted high-level work and were fully invested in each piece workshopped. And, most of all, led by faculty who were engaging, honest, invested in us, and so obviously wonderful teachers. I truly couldn't have asked for a better experience.

In addition to the rock star workshop, the line-up of Visiting Writers and industry professionals was outstanding--something I also appreciated about my first residency. In addition to readings given by these people, they also hold "informal talks," where they discuss their writing and professional lives, the industry, and whatever they feel like. We had the outstanding writer Richard Bausch (man could run his own theatre company, he's got so many voices in him), VCFA alum and writer Michael Hemery, writer and translator Maureen Freely (she translated the Nobel Prize-winning novel Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, and her descriptions of growing up in 1960s Istanbul were utterly captivating), and Ron Charles, book critic from The Washington Post (who, with Pres. Tom Greene sat in on a symposium event in which he discussed things vital to anyone pursuing a writing career in this country; it was called "The State of Fiction in America"). Poet Kathleen Graber also attended, though I didn't get to make it to any of her events.

The Visiting Writers series has quickly become one of my favorite things about residency. There's always a stellar line-up, and several chances to interact with and learn from these gifted, successful writers and eminently insightful industry professionals. Even when they're scary... like Charles talking about the chaotic state of the capricious publishing industry. (Still, these are things writers need to know.)

In addition to all this good stuff, I also got to meet and hang out with some fantastic new people. (The lovely, and hot, summer weather made for plenty of socializing outside.) Many of them were graduating from the program, in different stages in their writing careers and lives, and from all over the U.S. and around the world. I'm a "people person," just like my Grandaddy, so it was a pure treat to talk to these folks. What a wonder people are!

Back at home, I'm still processing my time in Vermont, this last residency.

Ha. Who am I kidding?

I'm chasing my 2 year-old, trying to plan her 3rd birthday party, begging my dog to forgive me for leaving her (and for that matter, for having a 2 year-old), trying to make plans and organize with my husband, who's just spent a week with a sick child (she contracted Strepp Throat while I was away), attempting to even get a tiny handle--even a pinky--on our family calendar for the rest of the summer, and debating whether it'd be neighborly to ask my back-door neighbor, an aging electric guitarist with a smoker's cough, to perhaps not rock out after 9 p.m.

Oh, and my first novel debuts September 15.

Heavens to Betsy.

But what I mean to impart is this: I am home. There is, as Dorothy so aptly put it, no place like it. And I return from Montpelier feeling, for the first time, that the Vermont College of Fine Arts is home, too.

Returning to Montpelier and VCFA

Our bed. In packing mode.

This is the state of my bedroom. For my Mom, this will probably bring flashbacks (or, as I like to call them, fond memories) of the state of my teenaged bedroom.

But no: this is my bed, now, as I pack for 11 days in Montpelier, Vermont, at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I fly out Wednesday morning for my second residency, and thus the beginning of my second semester in the MFA in Writing program.

I'm looking forward to it: 10 days of lectures, readings, workshop, and just being around writerly people. I'll get a new advisor for this new semester, and I'm curious about whom it'll be. And as much as I'm a wee bit sad (and a bit anxious) about leaving my family for that long--namely my two year-old--I'm looking forward to 10 days of just thinking about myself.

Sounds supremely selfish. But it's true. Only having to worry about me, about where I need to be and what I need to do, will be heaven. It also doesn't hurt that I'm renting a house in Montpelier with friends I'd made over the last residency. I'm envisioning wine on the front porch, exchanging of book lists, lots of talk (okay, gossip).  

My first semester as an MFA in Writing student was an interesting one. It flew by, and I never truly felt like I'd a minute to slow down. Truthfully, it was a balance act--teacher/mother/wife/writer/student--with a landing I'm afraid I didn't quite stick. I'm hoping that this coming semester will be a bit more manageable, if only because I've done it before.

Running the gauntlet
(Photo credit; en.wikipedia.org)

Even as I write that--be a bit more manageable--I cringe. Because I know that won't be true. Happily, my novel comes out September 15th, which is obviously a dream quite literally coming true. But with it comes several months of promotions, some travel, and quite a bit of work. I'm also teaching classes. And, oh yeah, back being a grad student. Trying to coordinate these roles alongside navigating family life at times feels like running the gauntlet.

You know the gauntlet, right? It can be as fierce as the picture to the right--all medieval and brutal and sharp--or as ridiculous as one of those Japanese reality shows where the contestants are knocked by enormous rubber waterwheels into foaming florescent water. My life seems more like the latter--really, really funny at times. With an ouch.

It's been an exceptionally busy few weeks. Good weeks, but crazy ones. My daughter is out of school. My husband took a new job that has him traveling and working from home. (More on the two-people-in-the-house-working-from-home hootenanny in a later post.) We celebrated his birthday and our 8th anniversary with our first date in months, which was wonderful. We went to an early movie and dinner in Asheville, N.C.

My husband and me, celebrating our 8th anniversary

(The movie, Snow White and the Huntsman, which I thought I'd be ambivalent about but which I really, really enjoyed. Charlize Theron is fantastic as the evil queen, Chris Hemsworth brings surprising dimension and even tenderness to the Hunstman, and Kristin Stewart makes a darn good bad-ass. Plus, the abundance of Golden Globe, Emmy and Oscar-winning actors is a win: Ian McShane, Theron, and more.)

I've yet to figure out how to successfully navigate life as a fully-functioning (read successful) workingwritingMomwifefriend. I've read dozens of books and blogs on the subject, hoping that one would hold the magic key. Most say the same thing: get organized, schedule, enlist help, make time for yourself.  

Time for yourself. Bah ha ha ha ha.

Kidding, kidding. It is possible. It can be done. Just maybe not this week....



* I may post while at VCFA, I may not. I hope you all have a wonderful end of June!

Reclaiming Summer

Rhododendron in Pisgah National Forest
(Credit: myspace.com)

The rhododendron are blooming in the Pisgah National Forest. Milky white with pink centers, in fanning green bushes tall as trees. On my favorite trail they grow like a great tunnel, canopying above. Running beneath them yesterday, the smell was like the forest exhaling summer.

It was only my second trail run since I'd sprained my ankle pretty terribly last month. If you're a runner, or even a part-time runner, you know what the first run back after a break is like: it's wonderful. Truly, you feel like a rock star, like you could run for days.

And then there's the second run. This was yesterday for me, running on very sore legs and a grumpy ankle encased in an Ace brace, my eyes scanning the trail ahead for unruly roots or rocks. My dog (an extremely athletic, almost 9 year-old black lab) bounded ahead, pausing only to drink from creeks or to look back at me as if to say, "What's up with you? We're in the forest, don't you get it?"

Then there was the rhododendron. And soon I was looking up, breathing in. Sure, I felt every jar in my ankle, blinked back sweat from my eyes, readjusted my sloshing Camelback. But when my dog shoots me one of those looks, one of those looks that says, Come on, you ridiculous human, this is the LIFE, it's imperative that I listen.

At the end of my last post I mentioned seizing the summer, trying to recapture the essence of what made this season so spectacular when we were kids. But it's hard, isn't it? Our lives are insanely busy, complicated, and the days pass so quickly that looking at a calendar is a recipe for whiplash. But if we don't do it--don't slow down, don't take a moment to just be--then the moment is lost, and we never get it back.

It's time to reclaim summer.

Here are three items from my personal "to do" list--things I hope will help me take back summer from the oppressive heat, the jam-packed schedule, the blood-thirsty mosquitoes in my backyard:

My daughter, 2 years old, baking a birthday cake for her daddy yesterday.

1. Enjoy time with my daughter. Really enjoy it. Take her for walks in the woods, for creek adventures and ice cream. Show her how to catch lightning bugs. Listen to what she has to say.

2. Read as many books as is humanly possible. Even if it keeps me up late at night. Even if I look a decade older in the morning. Read anything I want--magazines, books from the bestseller list, biographies, beach reads. Be brave enough to put a book down if I don't fall in love with it. (As an English professor, I have a hard time with this.) But summer is far too fleeting to trudge through a book you don't like.

So far, my reading list this summer has included Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot, Melissa de la Cruz's Witches of East End, Patricia Hampl's The Florist's Daughter, Adriana Trigiani's The Shoemaker's Wife, and various issues of Garden & Gun, Southern Living, Poets & Writers, Parenting Magazine, and a little book a dear friend gave me that we keep in the bathroom, called Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things.

3. Breathe. I mean it. Really breathe, deeply and cleanly, inhaling the light (the smell of rhododendron in full bloom, wafting scents from restaurants I pass on my walks around town, my daughter's giggles, my husband's clean shirts, the sweet early morning mist) and exhaling the dark (too little sleep, a calendar that would make the most "together" woman I know weep, short tempers, a cluttered house).

After all, it is summertime. And the intrinsic magic of summer never really fades, no matter how old we get.

So what's on your reading list? (I need ideas!) What do you plan to do to enjoy summer?

The Bad Boys of (My) Summer

The DVR is a beautiful thing.

Recently we aquired its magic, after about a year of hearing friends sing its praises. The other night I DVRed (I still want to say "taped") the newest film version of Jane Eyre, the one starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender.

Photo credit: http://movies.nytimes.com

I'd read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for the first time in middle school, and finished the book torn between a new obsession with the wild English moors, and an odd attraction to Rochester. I couldn't decide if I abhored him, arrogant, dark man that he was, or if I was wild about him, as Jane was. And at 13, this put me in a state for weeks. So much so that I hadn't returned to the story for years, until last night, when I watched the movie for the first time.

Photo credit: www.movies.about.com

Suffice to say, I went to bed dreaming of dark, dank, low-slung two-hundred year-old English hallways, and Michael Fassbender laying there in the dark, with a candle.

Which got me thinking (and this can be dangerous): What is it about those "bad" boys? Why do we love them--or, more accurately, obsess over them, in spite of their obvious faults?

I don't ascribe to the antiquated psychology that says that women think they can "tame" or "change" or "heal" a dangerous man. I've thought that was a load of crap since I read my first Harlequin at age 12. I think it's much more complicated (and at the same time more shallow) than that.

I think we like the "bad" boys because they're hot.
I think we like them because they're different, because they draw us out of the sometimes monotonous "ordinary."
I think we like the mystery.
I think when we're young and stupid (and stupid with hormones), we see their mystery as a challenge, and we draw for them a much deeper well than they truly possess.
I think we long for the illusion of the passion they seem to emanate, not realizing (at least until we're about 30) that it is an illusion, a fire certainly flaming at the moment but so easily extinguished.
Again, they're hot.

This post could erupt and grow into a psychological argument, but I won't go there because most folks don't read blogs for that sort of thing. Instead, I give you my personal list of "bad" boys. These are gentleman I've been obsessed with (in a very teenage, I'm-writing-awful-love-poems-about-you sort of way), and there's no real explanation for some of them.

Really.

1.) Rochester from Jane Eyre. (Now, namely Michael Fassbender playing Rochester.)

Photo credit: www.poptower.com

He's brooding. He's mysterious. He plays a game of cat-and-mouse with Jane that crosses the line into cruel. There's no explaining it. Oh, and he can ride a horse. In breeches.

2.) Sam Elliot. Sam Elliot playing anyone, but especially a cowboy. 

Photo credit: www.lawenforcer.com

I have a thing for older men, obviously. Can't help it. Yes, even with a handlebar mustache. Even long-haired and sweaty, in Road House. And yes, I do have a Master's degree in English.

Mmm mm. Love me some Sam Elliott.

3.) Mercutio, from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

From the 1996 film
(photo credit: www.the-mousetrap.net)

I realize that there's a bit of a jump from Road House to Shakespeare, but bear with me. I've had a thing for Mercutio since 9th grade honors English class, when I memorized the Queen Mab speech for a project. He's a true friend, smart, witty, wily and cool. I have a feeling he was hot, too. Even in tights.

4.) Eric Northman from Charlaine Harris's bestselling Sookie Stackhouse novels. (Okay, Alexander Skarsgard playing Eric Northman.)

Photo credit: www.tvfanatic.com

So he's a 1,000 year-old Viking vampire with no regard to human life or suffering. He's big, he's badass, and he doesn't care who knows it. (I do miss the long-haired Eric.)

5.) Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart.

Photo credit: www.free-extras.com

I saw this movie in high school in the theatre with two big, tough guys who are practically my brothers. We all cried at the end. And I know Mel has since lost his marbles. Despite this, my love for him as Wallace will never die. The craggy face. The scraggly hair. The courage. The kilt.

Sigh.

6.) Doc Holliday. Doc Holliday in the Wyatt Earp dime novels. Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone.

Photo from MySpace.com

 Scrawny, pale, and consumptive... it doesn't matter. He's funny, charming, with a Southern accent that could melt butter. And he's a card shark who can shoot. Plus, there's the loyalty to Wyatt. You can't underestimate loyalty.

Tombstone's also got Sam Elliott. In a black trench coat. With a gun. And the mustache. Yowza.

7.) Uncas. From any version of James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales: the novel itself, Sara Donati's version Into the Wilderness, and the movie The Last of the Mohicans.

Eric Schweig as Uncas
Photo credit: www.mohicanpress.com

Uncas is brave, strong, handy with a weapon, and oh-so mysterious. In The Last of the Mohicans, he's willing to fight hand-to-hand on a cliff to save a young woman that he may love. All I have to do is hear any song from this movie, and it gives me the chills. Still, after all these years.

It doesn't hurt that Eric Schweig is gorgeous. He set me on a preteen obsession with Native Americans that I've yet to shake.

8.) Paul Newman. In any movie, really, but especially as Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Photo credit: www.slowtrav.com

Some may vote for Redford in this film, but for me it's always been Newman. The blue eyes, the big heart, the cocksure grin, the wily plan to rob a bunch of banks. Love him.

9.) Toby Ziegler on The West Wing. Okay, Richard Schiff as Toby Ziegler on The West Wing.

Photo credit: tvguide.com

Sure, he's surly and stubborn and sometimes cold. But he's also uncompromising, idealistic, and smart as hell. And he's a great writer who loves his country more than life itself.

Again: Sigh.

10.) My own, personal, real-life list of "bad" boys. From the rock climbers/ mountain bikers/ paddlers/ Alaskan fly fishing guides/ regrettable frat boys to the 8th grade Lothario who wrote something very inappropriate in my middle school yearbook.

You all know who you are.

We had some good times. I'm glad they didn't kill me.

So, the "bad" boys. Irresistible, unstable, rakish and rascally. They're fun to dally with, fun to dream about, and certainly fun to write about. They appeal to the danger we harbor in our ordinary souls. To our wild sides.

The appeal of the "bad" boy, however, is temporary. It burns bright for a while, and being with them can exhilarate just as it hurts like hell. But men are at their best, I think, when they've shaken off the arrogance of youth and the shallowness of surface things.

As for the bad boys, they sure do make for a good story every once in a while.

So I'm interested, because I know I've missed more than a few: Who are your favorite "bad" boys of summer?

Summertime, Summertime

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.

~ L. M. Montgomgery

Summer is here, summer is here, summer is here! For me, there is no real dilineation of the season except for the letting-out of school, the thick mist low on the bottomlands, the emergence of green corn, and the appearance of the lightening bugs. I still feel summer like a child does, like a glow low in my abdomen, spread out to the edges of my appendages, sparking at the fingertips and bare feet. It is, as it always was, a gorgeous, magic, infinite time of year, no matter how old I get or how my life changes.

This past week I abandoned the Internet for a week at my family's lakehouse in the South Carolina foothills. This, and my willful, lazy embrace of summer, are the reasons for my not writing in a while, here. I don't have a good excuse.

The lakehouse is a special place for me, with a honing beacon that pings and lights no matter how long or far away I go from it. I could fill a book with the memories made there. But this past week, I was there because my husband was out of town on business, my daughter is out of preschool, and I'd just finished the last packet of my first grad school semester--30 pages plus 20 more for my summer residency mailed off--and for the first time in several months, my reading material was my own.

I packed an extra bag full of novels, biographies, new magazines, and DVDs, certain I'd wake early and stay up late, just to soak it all in. I took my laptop, thinking I'd be so inspired by sunrise over the lake and blue mountains that I'd be up every morning long before anyone else, typing away as I used to there as a teenager, so easily inspired. 

My soon-to-be three year-old, whom I was solo-parenting for the week, obviously didn't get the memo that Mama was going to be reading. And writing. She woke every night between 3 and 5 a.m., and only took a nap on the first and last day we were there. I spent days chasing her up and down steps, pushing her on the swing her Grandaddy installed at his Tiki Bar, just for her, and funneling her away from the edge of the dock. It also rained for three days straight. At the end of the week I looked about ten years older, and not tan. So not tan.

But still, it was a good week away from my house, my desk, my work worries. Sometimes you simply have to physically remove yourself from those things to disconnect. And, I had good friends visit, time with them and their kids, time--even if only snippets of it--to talk, to share, to laugh, to simply be. And this is priceless.

Photo credit: www.runwildadventures.com

Navigating motherhood alongside being a writer (and now, again a student) has been nothing but a challenge: an obstacle course like one of those mud runs, where you get to leap over fire and scale slippery walls and climb under barbed wire. You know the ones: where you come up utterly exhausted, your clothes trashed, with muck in your mouth and in your nose but a huge grin on your face.  Yep: motherhood is like this.

Thank God I like to get muddy.

Since it is summer, and the ferns are green in the woods, the crickets sounding their thrum at night, I vow to soak it in. To breathe. To go barefoot, eat a popsicle, ride a bike, and get dirty. I may be doing all these things with an almost three year-old in tow, and on very little sleep, but they'll happen. For it is summer (my, what a word!), and it doesn't get much better than this.